axa sun life mortgage endowment

fultime

Hi
Sent the letter advised re missold policys as ours promised £31000 plus lump sum and only has two years to go and currently is worth £10000 so a massive short fall. They have replied stating that they did contact us about this and offer us a complaint but we declined (all untrue, never received a letter from them) they say they have no copies of letter sent to us but have standard letters on file? So we cannot now complain. I also mentioned in my letter that we were promised in original paper work (I still have) that they would upgrade the policy once it had 5 years left to run so that it would pay out a bonus at the end but in there estimation of value they have stated there is no bonus, in reply to this they are saying that they realise they 'did not send a letter offering us to upgrade our payments' five years ago so they are now offering us to start extra payments now for the next two years and they will guarantee a bonus if we do but surely if they 'forgot' to send us a letter five years ago then they should automatically pay us the bonus at the end of the policy, why should we pay more monthly payments when the policy is hardly worth anything? We are paying £50 a month, which we have been doing for the past 18 years so we could have saved more than the £10000 they are offering in a high interest savings account. Any advice would be most gratefully received. Thanks.

EdInvestor

fultime wrote: »

Hi
Sent the letter advised re missold policys as ours promised £31000 plus lump sum and only has two years to go and currently is worth £10000 so a massive short fall. They have replied stating that they did contact us about this and offer us a complaint but we declined (all untrue, never received a letter from them) they say they have no copies of letter sent to us but have standard letters on file? So we cannot now complain.

They are saying you are "timed out" ie that they sent you a 'red letter" saying there was a high risk of shortfall more than 3 years ago.You are saying you never received any such letter. You also note they admit they didn't send you a letter about the bonus, which suggests their admin is not up to scratch and would tend to act in your favour if you took the complaint to the Ombudsman.

However, what is the basis for your complaint? You can't complain about poor performance.Most complaints are based on attitude to risk. See the "Which" site for advice on making complaints. You must move on to the Ombudsman within 6 months of the rejection.

I would doubt it is worth paying more for an unspecificed bonus, indeed it's likely to be better to bin this policy now, but post some info so we can see.

Guaranteed sum assured
Declared bonuses
Surrender value
Monthly premium
Maturity date
Maturity forecasts
Interest rate payable on mortgage

dunstonh

Its not just one letter you get. You get notified in your statements on multiple occassions of when you are timed out.

The last statement before you time out should have a warning of the date and that you are close to running out.

fultime

Hi thanks for the information. Here is the info you asked for.

Firstly I have looked at the statements and it has no mention of a 'time out' date as you stated, the last statement of the 17th March says total value of units is £10,625. It has a £20,000 death benefit on both myself and my husband. They have sent me a letter stating that Bid value is £10,789.44 plus an extra fund injection of £781.87 if we surrender it now, totalling £11.571.31. It says the plan does not qualify for a terminal bonus as it is not invested in the Axa Sun Life with Profits fund (but it states in original paperwork that it would automatically be reverted to this once 5 years remain on the policy) which is why they are now saying that if we increase the monthly payments (currently £49.24) for the last two years it will be reverted to this but they havent yet stated what the increase would be they will get 'back' to us on this. Maturity date they are stating is 12.03.2010 but original paperwork states maturity date is 12.02.2010 so they have added a month. The last maturity forecast at 6% was £12000. I hope this helps you to advise me what we should do now. Thanks again for all your help.

Karen

dunstonh

If it doesnt say it on the statements then I suggest you counter the complaint and say you were not notified, your statements dont say anything about time running out and you dont believe they notified you. The onus will be on them to prove it and if they cannot and still refuse, then you take it to the FOS on the basis of an unfair time bar.

EdInvestor

Hi Karen, still need your mortgage interest rate.

fultime

Ok thanks have just typed out another letter to them asking them to re consider there refusal, will see what happens with that. Thanks again.

Karen

fultime

Hi, our mortgage is a tracker one so its whatever the current interest rate is, we converted to a repayment mortgage so don't need the endowment to pay out now though.

Thanks

Karen

fultime

Just rec a letter this morning in reply to my request for them to re consider there refusal to accept my complaint they are still refusing and they don't really care either. They have also said that as they 'forgot' to send us correspondence re switching the plan to a with profits they are 'prepared' to waive the monthly payments we should have increased to, totalling £3767.32 but we will now have to increase our payments from £49 to £148.34 for the last two years of the policy starting from 12th May then they will guarantee £20000. My husband thinks we should do it as they are waiving the £3767.32 and we will be guaranteed the £20,000, what do you think? If we cash in the policy now and take the £11000 they are offering we will obviously lose the £20000 death benefit also, would it be better to just carry on paying the £49 a month for the next two years and wait and see what we end up with or increase the monthly payments by almost a hundred pounds for the next two years?

Thanks in anticipation

Karen

EdInvestor

fultime wrote: »

Hi, our mortgage is a tracker one so its whatever the current interest rate is, we converted to a repayment mortgage so don't need the endowment to pay out now though.

Thanks

Karen

So is it 5% or more? Often with trackers, it's base rate plus a bit.

EdInvestor

fultime wrote: »

Just rec a letter this morning in reply to my request for them to re consider there refusal to accept my complaint they are still refusing

OK then take it to the FOS

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk

Can't really help on the other issue until you confirm mortgage rate.